Mohenjo-daro, in the Larkana district of Sindh, is one of the largest surviving cities of the Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilisation. Laid out on a strict grid with covered brick drains running beneath every street, it gives visitors a rare, tangible sense of urban planning and public sanitation dating back roughly four and a half thousand years.
At a glance
Mohenjo-daro was the largest known city of the Indus Valley Civilisation, one of the great Bronze Age cultures that flourished alongside ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Its streets follow a precise north-south grid, and every one of them was built with a covered brick drain running beneath it, feeding into main channels large enough for a person to walk through.
No palaces, temples, royal tombs or evidence of a standing army have been found at the site, and no single ruler or deity has been identified from its remains, which has left archaeologists debating how the city was actually governed.
Key facts
- The Great Bath: a sunken tank measuring 11 by 7 metres and 2.4 metres deep, lined with fired brick and sealed with bitumen to make it watertight. Its exact function is unknown, though ritual bathing is the most widely held theory.
- Sanitation: most houses had their own bathroom and toilet, connected to the covered street drains; this level of domestic sanitation was not matched again in Europe until the nineteenth century. Well over 700 brick-lined wells have been found across the site.
- Brick standardisation: bricks across the city conform to a consistent 1:2:4 ratio of dimensions, a proportion still used in construction today.
- The Indus script: an undeciphered writing system of several hundred distinct signs, found mainly on small square steatite seals, including the well-known Pashupati seal showing a horned figure seated in a yoga-like pose surrounded by animals.
- Heritage status: inscribed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 1980, under the name Archaeological Ruins at Moenjodaro.
History
Mohenjo-daro belongs to the Indus Valley Civilisation, a Bronze Age culture contemporary with ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. The city itself was built around 2600 BCE and abandoned around 1900 BCE; the reasons remain debated, with climate change, flooding, the drying of the Indus river, epidemic disease and the arrival of new populations all put forward as possible explanations.
The site was rediscovered in 1922 by R. D. Banerji of the Archaeological Survey of India, and excavations led by John Marshall between 1924 and 1927 revealed the full extent of the city and, with it, the wider Indus Valley Civilisation. It was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980.
What you see
Mohenjo-daro lies in the Larkana district of Sindh, in the lower Indus valley, and remains one of the more remote heritage sites on any visitor itinerary, rarely reached by international tourists. What survives is the excavated lower city: grid-planned streets, the remains of houses with their own drains, and the brick-lined Great Bath at the centre of the site.
A site museum displays artefacts recovered from the excavations. Some of the most celebrated finds associated with Mohenjo-daro, notably the small bronze figure known as the Dancing Girl and the steatite bust called the Priest-King, are now held in national collections away from the site itself.
Practical information
- Guides: English-speaking guides are rare at Mohenjo-daro, so arranging one in advance through official channels is advisable.
- Conservation: rising salt crystals from the groundwater are damaging the mud-brick structures; irrigation canals built nearby in the twentieth century raised the water table beneath the site, and this remains an ongoing conservation concern.
- Access: facilities are limited given the site’s remoteness; check current arrangements with the relevant Pakistani heritage authority before travelling.
Getting there
Mohenjo-daro can be reached by air, via the small airport near the site with flights from Karachi, or by train to Larkana Junction followed by a taxi covering the remaining 27 kilometres to the site. Given how few international visitors pass through, it is worth confirming current transport options with an official source before setting out.
Nearby
- Harappa — around 600 km north in Punjab, Pakistan; the other great city of the Indus Valley Civilisation, sometimes described as its twin capital, with its own site museum. Much of its original brickwork was removed in the nineteenth century for use as railway ballast.
- Dholavira — around 700 km south-east in Gujarat, India, near the Rann of Kutch; a major Indus Valley Civilisation city inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2021.
- Karachi — around 500 km south; the National Museum of Pakistan there holds the Priest-King statue associated with Mohenjo-daro.
Sources
- Wikipedia, Mohenjo-daro
- Wikipedia, Indus Valley Civilisation
- Wikipedia, Great Bath, Mohenjo-daro
- UNESCO, Archaeological Ruins at Moenjodaro, WHS reference 138
- Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization, Oxford University Press, 1998
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